The Department of Justice and various Irish ISPs / telecommunications providers have been in negotiations for some time now as to how the Data Retention Bill will be applied once passed. The first draft of an agreement between them was leaked in September 2009 – …

Under Article 14 of the Data Retention Directive the Commission must produce a public evaluation of the application of the Directive before 15 September 2010. A draft version of that document has now been leaked (along with the Irish Government’s submission) and makes for very …

After last week’s excitement, this week is something of an anti-climax – when the case came back before the High Court today the State applied for and were granted further time to consider the judgment. The case will be listed next on June 11th. …

Great news today from the High Court where Mr. Justice McKechnie gave an extremely favourable decision on our constitutional challenge to data retention laws. While the full judgment is 53 pages long, the gist is relatively simple. Long story short: today’s decision has cleared the …

Karlin Lillington writes in today’s Irish Times about the German decision striking down data retention law as a breach of privacy and what it means for the Data Retention Bill currently before the Oireachtas. Here’s an excerpt: ANALYSIS: Data retention proposals about to become law …

The civil rights organisation which brought the successful challenge to data retention before the German Constitutional Court has now issued a press release on that decision. Here’s the full text: Press release by the German Working Group on Data Retention (AK Vorrat) 2 March 2010: …

Great news from Germany, where the Federal Constitutional Court has found data retention law to be incompatible with the right to privacy under the German Constitution. More thoughts on the decision and the implications for our own case at a later stage, but for the …

Last month the Romanian Constitutional Court issued an important decision holding that national data retention laws were unconstitutional and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The full text of that judgment is now available in English and makes cheering reading for civil …

The Data Retention Bill goes to Committee Stage before the Dáil today. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties have put together some excellent submissions on how the Bill should be amended to protect fundamental rights – a copy is here. Séan Sherlock (Lab.) is also …

From an email by Bogdan Manolea: The Romanian Constitutional Court declared, yesterday afternoon, the data retention law (law 298/2008) as unconstitutional, as it breaches art 28 of the Romanian Constitution which provides that secrecy of the letters, telegrams and other postal communications, of telephone conversations, …

Karlin Lillington has a strong piece in today’s Irish Times about a leaked draft agreement on data retention between state agencies (the Garda Síochána, Revenue and Defence Forces) and the telecoms industry (represented by ALTO, TIF and the ISPAI). Her comments are worth quoting extensively: …

Daithi MacSithigh has put together a summary of problems with the Bill – cross posted here with his permission: The Minister for Justice in Ireland published the Communications (Retention of Data) Bill last week: it was made available on the Oireachtas website (and brought to …